Zimbabwe Trivia
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48 free Zimbabwe trivia questions with answers — geography quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Zimbabwe trivia quiz runs from the stone city that gave the country its name to the coup that ended Robert Mugabe's rule: the Shona kingdoms of Great Zimbabwe and Mutapa, Mzilikazi and Lobengula, Cecil Rhodes and the Pioneer Column, Ian Smith's UDI, the Lancaster House Agreement, Gukurahundi, land reform, the 100-trillion-dollar note and the 2017 handover to Emmerson Mnangagwa. It also covers what visitors and fans know Zimbabwe for — Victoria Falls, Hwange and Cecil the lion, the Matobo Hills and the balancing rocks, sadza and the mbira, Doris Lessing and NoViolet Bulawayo, Nick Price's majors, Test cricket and swimmer-turned-IOC-president Kirsty Coventry. Questions run from easy to expert with the difficulty shown on each one. Every answer has been checked against a primary reference and each question carries its citation.
30 of 48 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the capital and largest city of Zimbabwe?
Harare
Harare began in 1890 as a fort raised by Cecil Rhodes's Pioneer Column; its present name, adopted in 1982, is said to honour the Shona chief Neharawa, 'he who does not sleep'.
Q 02Zimbabwe's capital was known by what name until 1982?
Salisbury
The Pioneer Column named the fort for Lord Salisbury, the British prime minister, when it arrived in Shona territory in 1890.
Q 03The name Zimbabwe is usually said to derive from a Shona phrase meaning what?
Houses of stone
Houses of stone — dzimba dza mabwe in Shona — refers to the medieval walled city of Great Zimbabwe near Masvingo; a rival reading, dzimba hwe, gives 'venerated houses'.
Q 04Great Zimbabwe grew rich sending gold and ivory to merchants on which stretch of African coast?
The Swahili coast
The Swahili coast: gold from the plateau went out through ports such as Sofala and made Kilwa the richest of the coastal trading cities, while Chinese porcelain and glass beads came back.
Q 05Great Zimbabwe's massive walls are famous for being built how?
Of dry stone, without mortar
Of dry stone, without mortar: nothing but the weight and fit of the granite blocks holds them, yet the Great Enclosure's wall, up to 11 metres high, has stood since the 13th and 14th centuries.
Q 06The soapstone carving that appears on Zimbabwe's flag and coat of arms depicts what?
A bird
A bird: eight such soapstone birds once stood on monoliths at Great Zimbabwe, and the emblem outlived the change of regime, having already flown on Rhodesia's flag and appeared on its coins.
Q 07Early Portuguese writers believed the gold of the Zimbabwean plateau had once enriched which biblical king?
Solomon
Solomon: Portuguese writers took the plateau's goldfields for the biblical Ophir, and the legend later sent the explorer Karl Mauch searching there, which is how he reached the ruins of Great Zimbabwe.
Q 08Which general broke with the Zulu king Shaka in the 1820s and founded the Ndebele kingdom in Matabeleland?
Mzilikazi
Mzilikazi, a Khumalo chief who served Shaka, is said to have defied him by keeping captured cattle, then led his followers north for years before settling in what became Matabeleland.
Q 09From which Ndebele king did Cecil Rhodes obtain the 1888 mining concession used to justify colonisation?
Lobengula
Lobengula signed the Rudd Concession in October 1888 and soon disavowed it, accusing Rhodes's agents of deceit; Rhodes still used it to win a royal charter for his chartered company.
Q 10Which British officer learned woodcraft from the American frontiersman Frederick Burnham in Matabeleland in 1896?
Robert Baden-Powell
Robert Baden-Powell rode on patrol with Burnham during the 1896 Ndebele rising, and the woodcraft he picked up went into the Boy Scouts he later founded.
Q 11In 1922, the colony that became Zimbabwe voted against joining which neighbouring country?
South Africa
South Africa: Southern Rhodesia's settlers chose their own government instead, and the next year Britain took the territory over from Cecil Rhodes's chartered company as a self-governing colony.
Q 12Which prime minister issued Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965?
Ian Smith
Ian Smith, prime minister since 1964, signed the declaration on 11 November 1965 after days of talks with Harold Wilson failed: Britain would grant independence only with a fair share of power for the black majority.
Q 13The 1979 agreement that ended Rhodesia's guerrilla war was signed at which London venue?
Lancaster House
Q 21Which opposition leader became prime minister in 2009 under a power-sharing deal with Mugabe?
Morgan Tsvangirai
Morgan Tsvangirai, founder of the Movement for Democratic Change, was sworn in as prime minister on 11 February 2009 under the Global Political Agreement, having withdrawn from the violent 2008 run-off.
Q 22Which vice-president's sacking triggered the November 2017 coup that ended Mugabe's rule?
Emmerson Mnangagwa
Emmerson Mnangagwa, nicknamed 'the Crocodile', was sacked on 6 November 2017 and fled abroad; the army moved about a week later, and by 24 November he was back and sworn in as president.
Q 23Where did Robert Mugabe die in September 2019, aged 95?
Singapore
Lancaster House, in London's St James's, hosted the talks Lord Carrington chaired from September 1979; the agreement was signed there on 21 December 1979, and Britain briefly resumed rule under Governor Christopher Soames.
Q 14Which music star played Zimbabwe's independence celebrations in 1980?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley and the Wailers played Rufaro Stadium on independence night; a year earlier he had released 'Zimbabwe', a song cheering on the fight against white rule in Rhodesia.
Q 15What was Gukurahundi?
A 1980s massacre campaign in Matabeleland
Gukurahundi was a 1980s massacre campaign in Matabeleland: from early 1983 the Fifth Brigade killed thousands of Ndebele civilians, and it stopped only when the 1987 Unity Accord folded the opposition party into Mugabe's.
Q 16Which country trained Zimbabwe's notorious Fifth Brigade?
North Korea
North Korea trained the Fifth Brigade under an agreement between Mugabe and Kim Il-sung; North Korean instructors drilled the unit in the Eastern Highlands for about a year before it deployed to Matabeleland in January 1983.
Q 17Who was Zimbabwe's ceremonial first president, replaced by Mugabe in 1987?
Canaan Banana
Canaan Banana, a Methodist minister, was head of state from independence until Mugabe rewrote the constitution and took the office, now an executive one, for himself.
Q 18What name did Zimbabwe's government give the programme of white-owned farm seizures it launched in 2000?
Fast Track Land Reform
Fast Track Land Reform followed Mugabe's defeat in a February 2000 referendum on a new constitution: within weeks war veterans and squatters were occupying hundreds of white-owned farms with government backing.
Q 19At the peak of Zimbabwe's hyperinflation in November 2008, prices were doubling roughly how often?
Every day
Every day: economist Steve Hanke put the doubling time at about 24.7 hours, and within months Zimbabwe had abandoned its own dollar for foreign currencies.
Q 20What was the face value of the largest banknote issued during Zimbabwe's hyperinflation?
100 trillion dollars
100 trillion dollars: the note carried fourteen zeros, the most ever printed on a banknote, and within three months of its issue Zimbabwe had stopped using its own currency.
Singapore's Gleneagles Hospital, where Mugabe had long travelled for treatment, was where he died on 6 September 2019; his 37 years in power had ended with the November 2017 coup.
Q 24Zimbabwe lies between which two great rivers?
Zambezi and Limpopo
Zambezi and Limpopo: the Zambezi marks the northern border with Zambia and the Limpopo the southern one; Cecil Rhodes wanted the land between them called Zambesia, but it took his own name instead.
Q 25What is Zimbabwe's highest point, at 2,592 metres in the Eastern Highlands?
Mount Nyangani
Mount Nyangani, long written Inyangani, is a walk rather than a climb, but fog can close in fast, and several hikers who lost their way on it have never been found.
Q 26What is Zimbabwe's largest national park, home to the lion Cecil?
Hwange
Hwange, founded as a game reserve in 1928, is Zimbabwe's largest park; wardens pump underground water into its pans through the dry season, and its elephant herd has grown far beyond what the land would naturally carry.
Q 27Cecil the lion, whose killing in 2015 caused a global outcry, was first shot with what by an American dentist?
A bow and arrow
A bow and arrow: Walter Palmer wounded Cecil with an arrow and the lion was tracked and killed hours later; as the outcry grew, three big US airlines stopped carrying big-game trophies.
Q 28Cecil Rhodes is buried at 'World's View' in which range of granite hills in Matabeleland?
Matobo
The Matobo Hills hold Rhodes's grave on Malindidzimu, a summit sacred as a place of spirits; in 2012 war veterans demanded his remains be dug up and sent to Britain, and Mugabe's officials refused.
Q 29What geological curiosity, pictured on Zimbabwe's banknotes, is most spectacular in Matabeleland's granite hills?
Balancing rocks
Balancing rocks — granite boulders weathered into precarious stacks — appear on Zimbabwe's banknotes: the famous 'Banknote Rocks' stand at Epworth, southeast of the capital, while the grandest displays crowd Matabeleland's granite hills.
Q 30The Marange fields in eastern Zimbabwe, scene of a mineral rush in 2006, became a major source of what?
Diamonds
Diamonds: after some 10,000 illegal miners rushed Marange in 2006 the state took the fields over, and reports of abuses by its security forces led campaigners to demand the stones be kept off world markets.